Frau Farbissina

Frau Greta Farbissina is a fictional character played by Mindy Sterling in the Austin Powers film series. Farbissina is a German attack and defense specialist and the founder of "the militant wing of the Salvation Army". She is also Dr. Evil's henchwoman and tries to help in his schemes to terrorize and take over the world. She has a heavy German accent and is well known for a running gag in which she shouts her orders needlessly loud and screeching, often startling Dr. Evil. For her performances, Sterling was nominated for Favorite Supporting Actress in a Comedy at the BMI Film & TV Awards. Biography Characterization Frau Farbissina's look and demeanour are parodies of several female villains from early James Bond films, namely From Russia with Love's Rosa Klebb (played by Lotte Lenya), On Her Majesty's Secret Services Irma Bunt (played by Ilse Steppat), and particularly the character of Frau Hoffner (played by Anna Quayle) in the 1967 Bond spoof Casino Royale. In Mike Myers' book Canada, he states that Frau Farbissina was a mixture of Rosa Klebb and Lotta Hitschmanova, who appeared in commercials for the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada on late-night television. Farbissina asserts that she would eventually like to get out of the criminal mastermind business and open a boarding school for girls. This is another reference to Quayle's "Frau Hoffner" role in Casino Royale in which Hoffner heads an international spy school in East Berlin known as the "Mata Hari School of Dancing", where she boards and trains young women to be agents for both sides of the Cold War.